1. Field
The following description relates to a packet-circuit integrated transport system capable of simultaneously transmitting packet traffic, such as Ethernet, Internet protocol (IP), and multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) packets, and circuit traffic, such as SONET/SDH, optical transport network (OTN) traffic, and more particularly, to an apparatus and method for efficiently managing and controlling OTN traffic.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, optical-packet-circuit integrated transport systems have been developed by providing independent fabric switches for each layer of a shelf in order to switch traffic for each layer, or by adding a switching circuit between fabrics. The existing switching method is complicated since all fabric switches for different layers need to be managed and operated, and it is inefficient in terms of system configuration.
To address such drawbacks, a multilayer-integrated fabric switch that allows for switching between packet and circuit traffics has been developed. The multilayer-integrated fabric switch uses fabric overhead to switch packet or circuit traffics to a destination line card; in the process of adding or removing the fabric overhead to/from the packet or circuit traffic causes the traffic speed to increase.
Generally, flow control is used to control a traffic rate so that is does not exceed an ODU payload rate, but is the same as the ODU payload rate. However, the existing traffic control method does not take into consideration a rate required to process fabric overhead which is needed in a multilayer-integrated fabric switch transport, and thus errors in OTN traffic, for example, OOF/LOM during OTN traffic transport based on the multilayer-integrated fabric switch have occurred.